1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a novel embodiment of a support shoe for a post or pole, comprising an anchor rod and a fork-shaped holder/fastener member.
2. Background Art
Such support shoes or post supports are used for supporting vertical wooden poles of different dimensions and embodiments. The poles normally vary from 90 to 178 mm in cross section, with 16 different dimensions within this range.
One conventional support shoe comprises a vertical anchor bolt that is intended to be embedded in the concrete foundation for the pole, with an associated upwardly directed holder/fastener member disposed at ground level. This is known as a fixed support shoe, wherein the anchor bolt is fixedly attached to the holder member. The holder has a fixed fork width, and almost no wooden pole dimension will fit exactly in the support shoe. In addition to the fact that a fixed support shoe of this type must be made in a relatively large number of different sizes, and even so has a poor fit to the various pole dimensions because the fork width is not adjustable, this support shoe requires such high precision during mounting that the procedure is unreasonably time consuming. The fork-like support plates on the holder may become incorrectly oriented during concreting because the anchor bolt to which they are fixed could turn about its own axis into an incorrect position. If this happens, it cannot later be corrected.
The support shoe disclosed in unpublished Danish Patent Application No. 4482/81 also suffers from the same drawback. In this embodiment, the anchoring pin is fixed to one of the holder's angle plates, which forms one-half of the fork-like holder. During use, one leg of the angle plate is essentially horizontal, while the other leg is essentially vertical to support the pole or post. The corresponding horizontal leg of the other angle plate is movably disposed on top of the horizontal leg of the first angle plate, so that the respective vertical legs of the fork-shaped holder, which are formed by the other two legs on the respective angle members, can be moved toward and away from each other for varying the fork width of the holder. The range of adjustment for a holder member of this type, wherein a horizontal leg of one angle plate slides on the horizontal leg of the other angle plate, and wherein said horizontal legs of the angle plates are formed with mutually engaging guidance and locking means, is very limited. The minimum fork width corresponds to the length of said plate-shaped, horizontal leg of the angle member (when the angle members have been pushed together as far as possible), while the maximum width of the fork is limited by the degree of overlap that is required to ensure that the cooperating guidance and locking means on the respective horizontal legs remain in engagement.